History for Little Pilgrims

In many ways, History for Little Pilgrims seems like a better place to start your child's history education than The American People and Nation. Full-color photographs and Vic Lockman illustrations make this one of the more engaging CLP history texts, and by starting with the student's own family tree, the study of history is made personal and is thus automatically more interesting.

How Does This Work?

Fifteen chapters follow the history of God's people from Adam to modern times. This is the most overtly Christian of CLP's history texts, but then it is basically a church history book. There is a focus on America near the end, as there is with most of the books in this series. The text is readable and clear, though some students may need to have the text read to them.

Each chapter ends with fill-in-the-blank review questions. Answers to these are included in the teacher's manual, which also includes lesson plans and fairly extensive teacher notes with supplementary material and ideas for presentation. A supplementary coloring book by Vic Lockman includes pictures of events and people from the text along with an identifying caption and appropriate Bible verse.

This is as much an apology for the study of history as it is a specifically-themed history text. History is approached as the study of God's people and God's interaction with man, and everything is examined from this perspective. While this would be fairly obnoxious in a text for older students, for first graders it's an excellent place to start as it builds on Bible stories that they're already familiar with (creation, Noah, etc.).

OurHonest Opinion:

This is CLP's first grade history text. You could use it for kindergarten, but we wouldn't recommend using it for anything later than second. If you're looking for an in-depth treatment of history, look elsewhere. First graders don't really need in-depth history, however, and this is a fun and easy introduction. This text would be easy to supplement, or to use for the first semester as introduction and use another text for the second semester.